Getting more Virginia reckless driving cases

It is essential for a Virginia criminal and traffic attorney to get reckless driving cases. These are the lifeblood of a Virginia criminal defense firm, comprising about a third of the average, healthy Virginia criminal law practice.

Virginia is perhaps the most profitable state to practice criminal defense law because of reckless driving cases. Other states simply have not criminalized speeding to the extent that Virginia has with reckless driving by speed. Committing a reckless driving by speed takes just a moment's lack of attention to how fast you are going. And so, regular middle class people who would never dream of intentionally committing a criminal act get caught up in the web of reckless driving by speed in Virginia. And given that the consequences for reckless driving are brutal and include a criminal conviction that can impact the ability to get a job, it is no wonder that these middle class defendants are willing to pay attorneys top dollar to protect their futures.

The going rate for reckless driving cases in most counties in Virginia appears to be between $300 and $450. That means that Virginia criminal defense attorneys are earning between $300 and $450 per reckless driving case. Criminal defense attorneys in other states must be staring at this screen in jealous, because there is really nothing like this in other states. In other states, what is considered reckless driving by speed in Virginia, is just an ordinary speeding ticket, with legal fees ranging between $85 - $200. When you factor in all the costs of handling a ticket, like paying an assistant to answer the phone and prepare the files, the costs of advertising, rent, and general overhead, etc. there is not a lot of profit in those $85 tickets in other states, but at $300 - $450 per reckless driving, Virginia attorneys are clearing up to $250 in profit per reckless driving case, even when taking into account the cost of advertising. There is little wonder then that Virginia criminal defense attorneys tend to be, financially speaking, among the best off criminal defense attorneys in the country.

But how do the most successful Virginia attorneys bring in reckless driving cases? There are a few ways:

1) Word of mouth (referrals and repeat customers): attorneys still love to claim that they get most of their business through word of month, meaning referrals, as well as repeat clients. The truth is that for the oldest and most established firms, this is probably true. But there are so many firms out there and the population is so mobile nowadays with people moving into and out of areas so often during their lives, that there isn't much of a chance for law firms to become the "family law firm" that generation after generation of a family go to for help. In some rural counties, you will still find one or two dominant, long lasting firms that most of the locals who have been in an area know about and go to when they are in trouble. But this is no longer the norm. And suffice it to say, for an attorney just starting out, word of mouth will not work initially. It will be years because enough cases come in through word of mouth to sustain a law firm for a newish attorney.

2) Website/Google/SEO/pay-per-click: what about getting clients by putting up a snazzy website with lots of search engine optimization and maybe even paying for pay-per-click? This worked great when the internet was relatively uncharted territory in the late 1990s early 2000s. There were enough people going onto the internet to make it a viable source of new clients, but there wasn't too much competition from other firms. Search engine optimization didn't take too much work - if you had an informative website, you could get lots of clients. And pay-per-click prices were relatively low. Nowadays, the internet is simply impossible competitive for lawyers. There are just too many law firms and too many law firm websites for a new website to make much difference. And search engine optimization takes an enormous amount of work. You cannot just write a small amount of content and stick it on your website and get clients. There are just too many websites doing that. Your website needs an enormous amount of content - roughly 2,000 words per page, with about 4 pages for every major theme. Add to this the fact that your website needs authority to rank highly. What is authority? It is links to your website and the length of time that you have had that domain and website up-and-running? SEO is unlikely to bring you a stream of cases, especially if you are a new lawyer with a new website with little authority. And per-pay-click works on a bidding system, and the prices of all the keywords like DUI, reckless driving, and so on have been bid up so much, that there is really no more profit to be made from pay-per-click. Since pay-per-click is so easy to use, and there are so many attorneys, if there was profit to be made using pay-per-click, the attorneys would bid up the keywords in an attempt to get new visitors to their website. These bids would up the price of the keywords until the profit vanishes. This is how competitive marketplaces work, and the pay-per-click marketplace for attorneys is one of the most competitive marketplaces out there. If there was profit to be made, other attorneys have beaten you to it. Having a presentable website is a good idea because otherwise potential clients who are interested in hiring you, could search for you online, and if they don't find a website, that may be a giant red flag for them. And you could lose those potential clients as a result. So develop a good looking website, just don't believe that this will be the path to easy riches.

3) Direct mail: if you look at what makes Virginia attorneys money, it is direct mail advertising, especially direct mail advertising for reckless driving cases. You are delivering a potent means of advertising to wealthy middle class people at the exact point in time that they need your services to prevent their life from being ruled by a reckless driving criminal conviction. Yes, you will be competing with other attorneys who are sending out direct mail advertisements. However, this is better than competing with thousands of attorneys on the web, where the potential client may not even know where to find an attorney who can help them with their ticket in the county that they got the ticket in. Direct mail says: "here I am. I am an attorney who practices in this county. I can help you with your reckless driving case. I have this many years of experience. Etc. Etc. Direct mail works. A rough estimate of the cost of direct mail is $1.30 per mail piece. This is the cost to send out one color letter in an envelope to a potential client. If you send out 100 of these, you will be spending about $130. If you have even a 1% success rate, you will be getting a reckless driving case with a legal fee of about $300 - $450. Can you see the potential for profit? In other states, with legal fees of $85 or $170 for the same basic charge, it is much harder to make a profit, but in Virginia it is easy. Maybe competition among law firms will drive down the legal fees on reckless driving cases. There is some evidence that that has already happened to a small degree. We see a lot more law firms charging around the $300 mark for Virginia reckless driving cases, as opposed to several years ago, when the fees were much closer to the $450 mark. We have also heard from Virginia attorneys saying the market is more competitive now and that some reckless driving clients are calling saying they were just quoted a really low fee by other attorneys (sometimes as low as $200). However, there is still money to be made. A Virginia attorney who concentrates on reckless driving by speed and is willing to travel to multiple different counties to handle these tickets, can realistically make six figures per year. Direct mail plus Virginia plus a focus on reckless driving (especially reckless driving by speed) can yield huge profits for attorneys.

Try direct mail advertising for Virginia reckless driving cases. Give us a call at 1-888-513-6245 or email us at info@directlegalmail.com.